ATP World Tour Finals Betting

The ATP World Tour Finals was founded back in 1970 as an end of season celebration for the best performing players of that given season. The tournament was initially known as the Masters Grand Prix and it was hosted in Tokyo. The tournament has gone through plenty of changes across its history, ranging from Stan Smith topping out a round robin format in the inaugural event, which featured six players in total, through to the current format of the top eight points-earners getting through to the event.

The tournament switched to being called the ATP World Championships in 1990 in a bit of a makeover as the ATP took over the event for the first time and then switched up again in 2000 when it became the Tennis Masters Cup. The switch over to the ATP World Tour Finals happened in 2009 and it has stuck ever since. In general, it has been raised to the status of really being the most indoor tournament of the tennis season. It is a prestigious honour to be picked up at the end of the calendar year.

Eight players make their way to the ATP World Tour Finals and for the most part, it is all about the points that have been picked up throughout the course of the season from ranking tournaments. Points towards rankings come from the four Grand Slam events and tournaments across the ATP World Tour, the ATP Challenger Tour and the ITF Futures. The 18 tournaments which count towards players qualification points are the four Grand Slams, the 8 mandatory ATP Masters and the best results from 6 other ranking tournaments.

Out of all that the top seven players from the ATP rankings get their places at the event and up to two Grand Slam winners ranked between 8th and 20th for the season (if such players exist, which is pretty unusual). If the eight spots haven't been filled then the next players in the ATP rankings get in.

The format of the ATP World Tour Finals is a unique one because it is the only event of the ATP season that isn't just a straight knockout event. The first stage of the tournament is a round robin format with the eight players split over two groups. Each player plays the other players in their group once and the top two from that go through to the semi-finals. The winner of the first group plays the runner-up of the second group and vice versa in the knockout stages. All matches across the tournament, from the group stage to the final are all the best of three tie-break sets.

Running alongside the singles event at the ATP World Tour Finals is a doubles event as well, which consists of eight teams. The qualification process is pretty much the same as that of the singles qualifiers, however, there is no commitment tournament so the ranking/qualifications points come from the 18 tournaments where a team's highest points were collected from. The format of the doubles tournament for the Finals is also the same as the singles, going through a round robin format.

The initial tournament then was won by Americans Stan Smith and that was his only title at the event. Other big names to have won it just the once includes Jimmy Connors and Andre Agassi. The legend Bjorn Borg and Lleyton Hewitt both won it twice through their careers, while Boris Becker and John McEnroe collected it three times each. Ilie Nastase won the event four times, and only four other players have won it on more occasions, Novak Djokovic, Pete Sampras, Ivan Lendl and Roger Federer. Peter Fleming and John McEnroe are the most successful doubles players with seven titles, while the Bryan brothers won it four times.

Britain's Andy Murray won the tournament for the first time in his career at the 2016 ATP World Tour Finals. Murray came through the round robin phase winning all three of his matches against Stan Wawrinka, Kei Nishikori and Marin Cilic. Novak Djokovic topped out the second group with a 100% record as well as he beat out Milos Raonic, Gael Monfils (replaced by David Goffin) and Dominic Thiem. So that kept Djokovic and Murray apart for the semi-final draw, with Murray stopping Raonic in three sets while Djokovic put in a barnstorming performance to beat Japan's Kei Nishikori 6-1 6-1 in his semi-final. So that set up the final that everyone had been anticipating and as the underdog, it was Murray who came through against Djokovic, beating the Serbian 6-3 6-4 in straight sets.

Because of injuries to Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray keeping them out of the latter part of the 2017 ATP season, two notable names are missing from the 2017 ATP World Tour Finals, also known as the Nitto ATP Finals this season because of sponsorship rights. Stan Wawrinka also missed out on the tournament through injury. But there is still going to be a massively competitive field which is going to be headed up by Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer. Those two have been the dominant forces in the ATP season in 2017, Nadal winning Roland Garros and the US Open, while Federer claimed the Australian Open and Wimbledon. Alexander Zverev, largely thanks to a couple of ATP World Tour Masters 1000 victories this season has made it through to his first ever ATP World Tour Finals and fellow rising star Dominic Thiem is back for a second crack at the tournament. Grigor Dimitrov, the only man aside from Nadal, Federer and Zverev to have won a Masters 1000 event this season also gets a spot. The tournament will run from November 12th through to the 19th at the O2 Arena in London.

You can find betting odds, previews and predictions about upcoming Tennis fixtures at the ATP World Tour Finals in our news category Tennis Betting: